Act 5 — SCENE III.

A Room in Dryfat’s House.

Enter Dryfat disguised as a proctor, and Club as a crier.

Dry. Come, Club, come, there’s a merry fray towards;^[390] we shall see the death of melancholy; wherein thou and I must call a grand jury of jests together, and pass upon them with the club law.

Club. Now, as I am O the crier, and yet but a young club, I have not yet practised that law: you have a whole dryfat on’t; I pray you, instruct me.

Dry. Why, ’tis a law enacted, by the common council of statute-caps,^[391] to qualify the rage of the time, to follow, to call back, and sometimes to encounter gentlemen when they run in arrearages; I tell thee, there’s no averment against our book-cases. ’Tis the law called make-peace: it makes 193them even when they are at odds; it shews ’em a flat case as plain as a pack-staff, that is, knocks ’em down without circumstance.

Club. Ay, marry, I like that law well; ’tis studied with the turning of a hand: there’s no quiddits nor pedlar’s French^[392] in’t; there needs no book for th’ exposition o’ th’ terms; ’tis as easily learned as the felling of wood and getting of children; all is but laying on load the downright blow.

Dry. Ay, and by the way of exhortation it prints this moral sentence on their costards,^[393] in capital letters, Agree, for the law is costly.

Club. Good, good: but all this while there’s no doctor thought on; we must have one to arbitrate.

Dry. Why, master Gerardine, man, has his name for the purpose: he shall be called doctor Stickler: lupus est in fabula, here he comes.

Enter Gerardine.

Ger. How now, lads? does our conceit cotten?^[394] ha’ you summoned your wits from woolgathering? are you fraught with matter for this merriment?

Dry. Full, full: we are in labour, man, and we shall die without midwifery.

Club. We are ravished with delight, like the wench that was got with child against her stomach. O, but^[395] if we could wrest this smock-law now in hand to our club-law, it were excellent!

Dry. Easily, easily: all shall be called the club-law.

Ger. As how?

194Dry. Why, thus. Club is the crier; I am Poppin^[396] the proctor; and you Stickler the doctor: he calls them to appear; I must be of their counsel, and you must attone them.^[397] We may know their cases and be in their elements, mark you me, but they cannot be in ours. Tut, none knows our secrets: we can speak fustian above their understanding, and make asses’ ears attentive. I’ll play Ambidexter,^[398] tell ’em ’tis a plain case, and put ’em down with the club-law; so that, as Club said well e’en now, our knavery is as near allied as felling of wood and getting of children.

Ger. Excellent, excellent! By this they are at hand: let’s bear these things like ourselves: I’ll withdraw and put on my habiliments, and then enter for the doctor.

Dry. Do so: they come, they come. [Exit Gerardine.

Enter Glister and Purge.

Welcome, master doctor Glister and master Purge: there’s a commission to be sat upon this day, to 195open a passage for imprisoned truth, concerning acts yet in tenebris.

Gli. True; I am brought hither by the malice of my wife.

Pur. And I have a just appeal against my wife.

Gli. Master Poppin^[399]—so I think you are called—I understand you have the law at your fingers’ ends.

Dry. I can box cases, and scold and scratch it out amongst them.

Gli. Indeed, fame reports you to be a good trumpeter of causes: I must retain you, sir, to sound mine.

Dry. My sackbut shall do it most pathetically: tell me, in brief, the nature of your case.

Gli. Faith, sir, a scandalous letter devised to wrong my reputation, about a bastard in the country which should be mine.

Dry. About a bastard in the country which should be yours? hum,—’tis very like you then, it should seem.

Gli. O no, sir! understand me, only fathered upon me.

Dry. Only fathered upon you cum nemini^[400] obtrudi potest: I understand you, and like you well too, you do not flatter yourself in your own case, no, ’tis not good: well, what more?

Gli. And about my niece, got with child in my own house.

196Dry. Byrlady,^[401] burdens of some weight, which you make light of! you deny?

Gli. What else, sir? I have reason.

Dry. I know it well, I take you for no beast: believe me, master doctor, denial and reason are two main grounds; stand upon them, and you cannot err.—Your case, master Purge?

Pur. First take your fee, master Poppin,^[402] that you may have the more feeling, and urge it home when you come to’t. [Gives money.] Mine is a discovery of my wife’s iniquity at the Family of Love.

Dry. Otherwise called the House of Venery, where they hunger and thirst for’t.

Pur. True, sir: you have heard of the Hole in the Wall, where they assemble together in the daytime, like so many bees under a hive?

Dry. Come home crura thymo plena, and lodge among hornets, is’t not so?

Pur. I cannot tell, sir; but, for my part, I am much noted as I go.

Dry. No doubt of that, sir; your wife can furnish you with notes out of her cotations.^[403]

Club. Ay, and give him a two-tagged point^[404] to tie ’em together.

Dry. But how came you to detect her?

Pur. Why, thus, sir: getting the word, I dogged her to the Family, where, closing with her, I whispered so pleasing a tale in her ear, that I got from her her wedding-ring; and here ’tis.

Dry. Well, out of that ring we will wring matter that shall carry meat i’ th’ mouth. But what witness 197or proof can you produce to make good your wife’s iniquity and your own cuckoldry?

Pur. Master Lipsalve and master Gudgeon, who were her companions at that same time.

Dry. Very good.—Are they cited in the quorum nomina?

Club. They will be here, sir.

Gli. If they be, they will bewray^[405] all.

Dry. So much the better; ’twill savour well for master Purge.

Pur. You understand my case now?

Gli. And mine too, sir?

Dry. I do, I do: they are as different as a doctor and a dunce, a man and a beast: here’s the compendium; yours, master doctor, stands upon the negative; and yours, master Purge, upon the affirmative: pauca sapienti, I ha’t, I ha’t.

Pur. Mine is very current, sir; I can shew you good guilt.

Dry. Ay, marry, there spoke an angel;^[406] gilt’s^[407] current, indeed: let me feel’t, let me feel’t.

Pur. I mean, my wife’s guilt.

Gli. Master Poppin, you shall have innocence to speak for me.

Dry. Tut, innocence is a fool, I care not for’s company; I can speak enough without him.

Gli. Then, I hope, you will be as good to us as the five-finger at maw.^[408]

198Dry. No, rather as Hercules, to lip-labour ’em with the club-law: tut, let me alone.

Enter Mistress Glister, Mistress Purge, and Maria.

Mis. G. O, are you here, sir? I have brought you a full barn to glut your greedy appetite: if you have any maw, feed here till you choke again. Now shall I see the whole carcass of your knavery ript up: if thou hast any grace, now will thy red beard turn white upon’t.

Mis. P. O how have I been toss’d from post to pillar

In this libidinous world! The yoke I bear

Is so uneven, as if an innocent lamb

And a mad hare-brain’d ox should draw together:

But I must have patience, there’s no remedy.

Dry. There’s some difference between these two tempers.

Gli. I would give a hundred pounds my wife had so gentle a spirit. [Aside.

Pur. My wife must needs be gentle, for she can bear double. [Aside.

Re-enter Gerardine, disguised as a doctor.

Dry. Here comes master doctor: now rig up your vessels, every one to his tackling.

Ger. Good day to all at once, and peace amongst you!—

Fie, how I sweat! I think Vulcan ne’er toiled so at his anvil as I have done, and all to make maid’s water to slake Cupid’s fire, and to turn his shafts from the feather-bed to the bed-post, from the heart to the heel.—

Come, master Poppin, shall we to this gear?^[409]

199Dry. Reverend doctor, we have stayed your coming.—Crier, cry silence.

Club. Silence!^[410]

Dry. Master doctor, I have heard in general terms the tales of master doctor Glister and master Purge, which have in mutual manner jumped into the quagmire of my mind; out of which quagmire, by your enforcement and mine own duty, I pluck them up by the ears, and thus, in naked apparance,^[411] I present them.

Ger. Ad rem, ad rem, master Poppin; leave your allegories, your metaphors, and circumlocutions, and to the point.

Dry. Then briefly thus: I have compared their tales,—how short they will come of their wives’ I know not: and first for mistress Purge.—Crier, call mistress Purge.

Club. Rebecca Purge, wife to Peter Purge, ’pothecary, appear upon thy purgation, upon pain of excommunication.

Mis. P. Here I am,—O time’s impiety!—

Hither I come from out the harmless fold

To have my good name eaten up by wolves:

See, how they grin! Well, the weak must to the wall;

I must bear wrong, but shame shall them befall.

Ger. Who is her accuser?

Dry. Her own husband, upon the late discovery of a crew of narrow-ruffed,^[412] strait-laced, yet loose-bodied 200dames, with a rout^[413] of omnium-gatherums, assembled by the title of the Family of Love: which, master doctor, if they be not punished and suppressed by our club-law, each man’s copyhold will become freehold, specialities will turn to generalities, and so from unity to parity, from parity to plurality, and from plurality to universality; their wives, the only ornaments of their houses, and of all their wares, goods, and chattel[s], the chief moveables, will be made common.

Pur. Most voluble and eloquent proctor!

Ger. Byrlady,^[414] these enormities must and shall be redressed, otherwise I see their charter will be infringed, and their ancient staff of government the club, from whence we derive our law of castigation,—this club, I say (they seeming nothing less than men by their fore-part), will be turned upon their own heads.—Speak, Rebecca Purge; art thou one of this Family? hast thou ever known the body of any man there or elsewhere concupiscentically?

Mis. P. No, master doctor, those are but devices of the wicked to trap the innocent; but I thank my spirit I have fear before my eyes, which my husband sees not, because something hangs in’s light.

Pur. That’s my horns; she flouts me to my face, and I will not endure it: I shall carry her mark to my grave. [Aside.]—Master doctor, she has given me that, that Æsculapius, were he now extant, could not heal, nor edax rerum^[415] take away.

Ger. Produce your witness, master Purge, and blow not your own horn.

201Pur. Master Lipsalve and master Gudgeon, let them be called.

Club. Lawrence Lipsalve and Gregory Gudgeon, late of hic et ubique, in the county of nusquam, gentlemen, come into the court and give your evidence, upon pain of that which shall ensue.

Enter Lipsalve and Gudgeon.

Gli. Here they come, in pain I warrant them.—How works your physic, gallants? do you go well to the ground? now cuckold the doctor!—Wife, who’s your first man now?—now strike^[416] with the scabbard! ha, ha, ha!

Gud. A villanous doctor!

Lip. Mountebank, you’re a rascal, and we will cast about^[417] to be revenged.

Dry. Cast about this way and bewray^[418] what you can concerning mistress Purge, who stands here upon her purgation, either to prove mundified or contaminated, according to the tenor-piece of your principal evidence.—First give ’em the book.

Club. Come, lay your hands upon the book: you shall speak and aver no more, nor wade no farther into the cream-pots of this woman’s crime, than the naked truth and the cart-rope of your conscience shall conduct you, so help you the contents! Kiss the book.^[419]

Lip. Alas, we are not in case to answer largely! but if you will have our evidence in brief, I think I kissed her at the Family some three times, once 202at coming, once at going, and once in the midst; otherwise never knew her dishonestly.

Pur. Ay, mark that middle kiss, master doctor.

Gud. And for my part, I have been more mortified by her than ever I was provoked.

Ger. How say you to this, master Purge? your witness is weak, and, sir-reverence^[420] on[’t], without sounder proof, they may depart to the close-stool whence they came, and you to your ’pothecary’s shop.

Pur. No, master doctor, I have another bolt to shoot that shall strike her dead; she shall not have a word to say.

Dry. Answer me to this, mistress Purge; where’s your wedding-ring?

Mis. P. My wedding-ring? why, what should I do with unnecessary things about me, when the poor begs at my gate ready to starve? Is it not better, as I learned last lecture, to send my substance before me, where I may find it, than to leave it behind me, where I must forego it? Yes, verily: wherefore, to put you out of doubt, I have given that ring to charitable uses.

Dry. Nay, now she falters: my client can shew that ring, got from her at the Family, when these two courtling[s] had at the same time beleaguered her fort.

Ger. This alters the case clean.—What starting-hole ha’ you now, mistress Purge?

Mis. P. E’en the sanctuary of a safe conscience: now, truly, truly, however he came by that ring, by my sisterhood, I gave it to the relief of the distressed Geneva.

Pur. How? to the relief of the distressed 203Geneva?—Justice, master doctor! I may now decline victus, victa, victum; one word more shall overthrow her. I myself was a Familist that day, who, more jealous than zealous in devotion, thrust in amongst the rest (as I had most right), on purpose to sound her, to find out the knavery: short tale to make, I got her ring, and here it is; let her deny it if she can: and what more I discovered non est nunc narrandi locus.

Mis. P. Husband, I see you are hoodwinked in the right use of feeling and knowledge,—as if I knew you not^[421] then as well as the child knows his own father! Look in the posy of my ring: does it not tell you that we two are one flesh? and hath not fellow-feeling taught us to know one another as well by night as by day? Husband, husband, will you do as the blind jade, break your neck down a hill because you see it not? ha’ you no light of nature in that flesh of yours?—Now, as true as I live, master doctor, I had a secret operation, and I knew him then to be my husband e’en by very instinct.

Pur. Impudence, dost not blush? art not ashamed to lie so abominable?

Mis. P. No, husband, rather be you ashamed of your own weakness; for, for my part, I neither fear nor shame what man can do unto me.

Ger. Master Purge, I see you have spent your pith; therefore best make a full point at the ring, and attend our pleasure.—Master Poppin,^[422] proceed to the rest.

Dry. Crier, call doctor Glister.

204Club. Doctor Glister, alias suppositor doctor^[423] of physic, appear upon thy purgation, upon the belly-pain that may ensue thereon.^[424]

Gli. Here, master doctor.

Ger. Who is his accuser?

Dry. His clamorous wife, who seems to enforce a separation about a bastard in the country, which should be his, only fathered upon him.

Ger. What proof of that?

Mis. G. Proof unanswerable, master doctor, the nurse’s letter: let it be read; but first observe his countenance; it may be his blushing will bewray his guilt.

Ger. Now, by this light, I thought it had indeed, but I see ’tis but the reflection of his beard.—Read the letter, master Poppin.^[425]

Dry.^[426] [reads] After my hearty commendations remembered unto your worshipful doctorship, trusting in God that you are as well as I was at the making hereof, thanks be to him therefor! the cause of my writing unto you at this time is to let you understand that your little son is turned a ragged colt, a very stripling; for, being now stript of all his clothing, his backside wants a tail-piece, commends itself to your fatherly consideration. Woe worth the time that ever I gave suck to a child that came in at the window, God knows how! Yet if you did but see how like the pert, little, red-headed knave is to his father, and how like a cock-sparrow he mouses and touses my little Bess already, you would take him for your own, and pay me my hire. I write not of the want of one thing, for I want all things; wherefore take some speedy 205order, or else as naked as he came from the mother will I send him to the father. From Pis.^[427] the xxii of —— Your poor nurse, Thomasine Tweedles.

Gli. Master doctor, truth needs not the foil of rhetoric; I will only in monosyllaba answer for myself (as sometimes a wise man did): such and such things are laid to my charge, which I deny; you may think of me what you please, but I am as innocent in this as the child new-born.

Ger. Why, there’s partly a confession: the child, we know, is innocent, and not new-born neither, for it should seem by the letter he is able to call his dad knave.

Gli. You take me wrong, master doctor.^[428]

Dry. Under correction, thus much can I say for my client’s justification. Indeed he hath travelled well in the beating of pulses, and hath been much conversant in women’s Jordans; but he had ever a care to raise his patient being before cast down: his charitable disposition hath been such to poor folk, that he never took above fourpence for the casting of a water, which good custom was so well known among all his patients, that if sixpence were at any time offered him, they might be bold to ask and have twopence again. He hath been so skilful and painful withal in the cure of the green sickness, that, of my knowledge, he hath risen at all hours in the night to pleasure maids that have had it: and for that foul-mouthed disease, termed by a fine phrase—a pox on’t, what d’ye call’t? O, the grincomes^[429]—at that he hath played his doctor’s prize, and writes nil ultra to all mountebanks; so that the wise woman in Pissing-Alley, nor she in Do-little-Lane, are more famous for good deeds 206than he. Then, master doctor, out of these presumptions, besides his flat denial (a more infallible ground), you may gather his innocence, and let him have his purgation.

Ger. No, master Poppin,^[430] it is not so to be foisted off.

Mis. G. Nay, master doctor, what say you to his own niece, that looks big upon him? an arrow that sticks for the upshot against all comers; which by his restraint of her from master Gerardine, an honest gentleman that loved her, and upon that colour^[431] from the sight and intercourse of other men, must, by all presumptions, be his own act.

Ger. O monstrous! this is a foul blot in your tables^[432] indeed.

Gli. Wife, thou hast no shame nor womanhood in thee; thy conscience knows me.

Mis. G. True of thy flesh, who knows not that? thy beard speaks for thee: ay, ay, thou liest by me like a stone, but abroad thou’rt like a stone-horse, you old limb-lifter!^[433]

Dry. Cease your clamour, and attend my speech.—Most worshipful, reverend, and judicial doctor, for the quickening of your memory, I will give you a breviat of all that hath been spoken. Master doctor Glister hath a cradleful and a bellyful, you see, thrust upon him; and master Purge a headful.—Your wife is an angry honeyless wasp, whose sting, I hope, you need not fear,—and yours carries honey in her mouth, but her sting makes your forehead swell:—your wife makes you deaf with the 207shrill treble of her tongue,—and yours makes you horn-mad with the tenor of her tale.—In fine, master doctor’s refuge is his conscience, and master Purge runs at his wife’s ring.^[434]

Ger. Summa totalis, a good audit ha’ you made, master Poppin.^[435]—Now attend my arbitrement. For you, gallants, though you have incurred the danger of the law by using counterfeit keys, and putting your hands into the wrong pocket, yet because I see you punished and purged already, my advice is, that you learn the A B C of better manners: go back and tell how you have been used in the city; and being thus scoured, keep yourselves clean, and the bed undefiled.—For you, master Purge, because I see your evidence insufficient, and indeed too weak, to foil your wife’s uprightness, and seeing jealousy and unkindness have^[436] only made her a stranger in your land of Ham, my counsel is, that you readvance your standard, give her new press-money.

Pur. You may enjoin me, sir, but——

Ger. But not at me, man: I will enjoin you, and conjoin you, and briefly thus. You have your ring that has made this combustion and uproar: that keep still; wear it; and here, by my edict, be it proclaimed to all that are jealous, to wear their wives’ ring[s] still on their fingers, as best for their security, and the only charm against cuckoldry.

Pur. Then, wife, at master doctor’s enjoinment,^[437] so thou wilt promise me to come no more at the Family, I receive thee into the lists of my favour.

Mis. P. Truly, husband, my love must be free still to God’s creatures: yea, nevertheless, preserving 208you still as the head of my body, I will do as the spirit shall enable me.

Ger. Go to, thou hast a good wife, and there[’s] an end.—Upon you, master doctor, being solicited by so apparent proof, I can do no less than pronounce a severe sentence; and yet, i’faith, the reverence of your calling and profession doth somewhat check my austerity: what if master Gerardine, by my persuasion, would yet be induced to take your niece, and father the child? would you launch with a thousand pound, besides her father’s portion?

Gli. Master doctor, I would, were it but to redeem her lost good name.

Ger. Then, foreknowing what would happen, I thought good, in master Gerardine’s name, to have this bond ready, which if you seal to, he shall take her with all faults.

Gli. That will I instantly. [Seals the bond.]

So, this is done; which, together with my niece, do I deliver by these presents to the use of master Gerardine.

Ger. He thanks you heartily, and lets you know,

[Gerardine, Dryfat, and Club discover

themselves.

That Indian mines and Tagus’ glistering ore

To this bequest were unto me but poor.

Gli. What? Gerardine, Dryfat, and Club!

Dry. The very^[438] same.

Club. You are welcome to our club-law.

Ger. Cease admiration here: what doubt remains

I’ll satisfy at full. Now join with me

For approbation of our Family.

209

EPILOGUE.^[439]

Gentles, whose favour[s] have o’erspread this place,

And shed the real influence of grace

On harmless mirth, we thank you; for our hope

Attracts such vigour and unmeasur’d scope

From the reflecting splendour of your eyes,

That, grace presum’d, fear in oblivion dies.

Your judgment, as it is the touch^[440] and trier

Of good from bad, so from your hearts comes fire,

That gives both ardour to the wit refin’d,

And sweetness [to] th’ incense of each willing mind.

O may that fire ne’er die! nor let your favours

Depart from us: give countenance to their labours

Propos’d a sacrifice, which may no less

Their strong desires than our true zeals express.

[Exeunt omnes.